Is it just me, or is anyone else blown away by the fact that it is already December 6th? I feel like it was literally just the beginning of summer two days ago and now we are 19 days away from Christmas and 26 days away from 2019! Say what?!?! It’s that time of the year where our social media feeds flood with the quintessential holiday decor pictures (hey, I do it too, nothing wrong with spreading a little cheer!) but it’s also the time when all the memes/various social media posts start to pop up about how awful this year was and how the New Year can’t come soon enough. I have so been there. In fact, I’ve been there every year since 2015. Let’s be real…life happens. It’s messy and raw and a tumultuous rollercoaster — but it’s also freaking beautiful.

This month I wanted to tackle a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for quite some time: living a more minimalistic lifestyle. I tend to be more of a long winded writer so I’m going to do my absolute best in this post to write with minimalism in mind and keep it streamlined…here goes nothing! I remember our foray into a more minimalistic lifestyle quite clearly - Mike and I had gotten back from a wonderful weeklong vacation in N. Myrtle Beach in May of 2017. I always suffer from the "post vacation blues" but this time it seemed there was more to my unhappiness. I felt like the walls of the condo were closing in on me and had the strangest sense that everything was all wrong. I honestly can't even put it into words.

No matter how many books I read on Buddhism, the power of acceptance, or mindful presence, or whatever else is on my current spiritual buffet, I remain with a resounding thought: Are we there yet?

Meaning… am I there yet?

In January (just about two months away!!) I’ll celebrate two years since chemotherapy. Recovery has included every single aspect of myself: mental, spiritual, emotional, financial. And there were times it was painstakingly slow that I cried almost every day. And then there were times it felt like 10 seconds long and I could stand in my present self and be completely shocked that I made it this far out.

Did you know that World Heart Day is celebrated every year on the 29th of September? Cardiovascular disease accounts for nearly half of all non-communicable diseases, making it the world’s number one killer. World Heart Day strives to educate individuals that by controlling their risk factors at least 80% of early death from stroke and heart disease could be entirely avoided. Risk factors include poor eating habits, lack of exercise, smoking and excessive drinking.

Hi guys - I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since I last wrote...a lot hit me at once and I needed a little writing hiatus. Super grateful to Allison for stepping in and sharing her Until Further Notice....Celebrate Everything piece which came at a time I needed it most! Taking a break from writing specifically isn't typical for me - usually one of my first go to's for processing tough stuff is through writing. So let me briefly fill you in on what's been doing on and how it brings me to my topic for this month...meditation!

We've always tried to keep this blog positive. We deal with heavy topics sometimes here at LL, and we're definitely not immune to some seriously challenging life circumstances. One of the side effects of hardship (for me) has been that I hesitate to feel happy, to feel joy, to feel like I have my feet on solid ground. When I do feel the urge to celebrate, I think "what will go wrong next?", or "will celebrating make it more likely that something bad will happen?" or "how will I ever get anything done if I'm always celebrating where I'm at?"

Happy July, Loving Lately readers! I honestly don't know where the month of June went! I've had many different ideas for posts floating around in my head but the majority of them require a little extra research and insight so I'm going to save them for a later date. For this month's post I decided to copy Allison (because twinning….duh) and focus on something that I have been Loving Lately: my transition to a primarily pescaterian and plant based lifestyle!

So you guys may or may not have noticed… I took a little hiatus. Kelly and I have religiously switched on and off every 2 weeks writing blog posts since Loving Lately began and in the middle of last month I just completely shut down and couldn’t. I didn’t want to write candidly and in detail about what was going on in my personal life, but I also didn’t feel like writing about just anything because everything else felt so inconsequential.

The long story short is Scott and I lost a member of our immediate family to cancer. And we’ve been grieving this for some time now and the last time I was supposed to write for Loving Lately I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what would be important enough to write about and Kelly I’m so thankful took the wheel for me and posted all this gorgeous love and amazement with her Heart’s Delight post.